The update!
So as to not be an ass or anything I will try to divide this up with LJ cuts. If anything interests you please go for it and have a read. I don’t like doing multiple entries.

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence

So I stopped. I think I put about 8 hours in. That time was fun and I could see the game being decent. It felt really sparse at points. I think that a filter effect similar to Silent Hill would have done a ton of ascetic good for the game. But it just ended up looking too rough.

Visuals aside the game showed a lot of potential. I was really starting to enjoy the combo system and the guard system (with the dodge and whipping) although it makes me feel a little overpowered. The combo system felt deep and … real. I started out with no combos and wimpy. Trying different order presses and distances I learned what worked, then they would throw in a new element for me to mess with. I was evolving with the character at a constantly widening gap for skill.

Then I hit a halting point. I realized what the game wanted me to do after a certain point. It wanted me to go back through all the rooms and put together minor details to get keys and new abilities. Saying that is too simple as many Castlevanias do that.

No.

It gave me no reason to fight. I got no experience for it or souls (more on that later) nor was a punished for not combating things. I just run for 15 min andjump, fucking jump, to maybe find something. Let me tell you something IGA, if you want to have people look up to areas to find passage ways don’t use a down aiming camera. (I wanted to use an exclamation point).

In an interview with Play Magazine about the upcoming Castlevania: Curse of Darkness IGA stated that he just wants to make a better 3D action game. Well, chalk this up to a failure. It seemed to have such potential at points, but then you made it tedious and sucked the fun out… why?

So backtracking with minimal reward and no accurate direction taking long periods of time led to this downfall. I am pretty sure I will not miss this game, although it did show potential. Perhaps one day I will really fiend for it and pull it out to finish it, but probably not. I put in Final Fantast X.

Final Fantasy X

I hit the 21 hour mark yesterday. See I thought to myself, up to the time leading to taking my wife and mother in-law to the cruise boat, I will have a lot of free time. I could actually knock out a large chunk of the game in a small amount of days. I decided against it in favor of C:LoI. Well that was Thursday afternoon.

After a short nap to kill a headache I awoke and realized that, no C:LoI was not the proper choice. So in went FFX. I did not have a whole lot of other options on my plate, and I had already done all that talking to myself about free time.

I remember Final Fantasy games being more tedious in the leveling department. Not that there are levels in this game. I kind of like that. I should say some bad things first.

Tidus; if you recap one more godamn one liner I will kick you in your junk.

-Regards

I want to start off by saying that Tidus is the least empathic role playing… hell video game characters ever. He feels like an NPC. I cannot put me in his place, I can’t identify. He takes over too much. Not like I can really put myself in other game characters shoes, but they are more of an avatar that Tidus is.

Almost every time I would start to feel like it was my adventure Tidus would pull back on the reigns and take back over. Never allowing me to put emphasis on situations. Always pointing out the obvious. Telling the player about the significance . . .

Yuna: I really need to go to the bathroom, I will be back.
Titus: “I really need to go to the bathroom.” I don’t know why but that stuck with me. It was not until later that I realized why she said that.
later
Yuna: Sorry, I had to shit.

90% of Titus flashbacks are him recapping the previous conversation and reminding us that we have seen the end of the story (although can not comprehend if it is good or bad). It makes me feel like I am 8 again and that I have my mom to explaining what happen.

Don’t hold my damn hand so tight; you are cutting off the circulation.

Also, the character models in cut scenes remind me of Teddy Ruxpin. When they might be or are talking the mouth just starts moving to give the appearance of sync. Mainly this is just silly pointing than a complaint. I could not imagine the amount of effort to make them sync.

Wakka is one of the worst character packages (design, personality, voice actor) I have ever seen. He is so irritating I just want him off my team. Go pray to Yeavon and do not come back, ever. I guess they did this to compensate for Aurons excellent character package. It is unfortunate, but it does not appear that he will return for the X-2 game.

Aside from my many complaints (I do have many more) I find myself enjoying the game. Combat is nowhere near as irritating or boring as I remember other FF games being. The grid is pretty good. It reminds me of a career path. Once you get on it you know what you have to do to get better. It makes the numbers and levels of past seem arbitrary.

This is also the most linear feeling RPG I have ever played. No world map to give a false sense of freedom. I liked that. It felt like a large breath of fresh air, the emperor was told he has no clothes and I felt better about it. I usually just put on some music during the battle roads and then switch back over to the game for the plot areas. It feels like such a waste not to hear the full voice acting for the game.

Like I said, I put in 21 hours already, I will probably finish it. I am not sure if I will jump into X-2 but time will tell. I did get side tracked a little on Tues.


Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

For some reason I thought that Aria was a non-musical term. Not that I knew what the non-musical term was, but I … yea. So I looked it up. It appears as thought it is given to a stunning solo performance usually associated with Opera, or something like that. Anyways this Hymn of Sadness came in the mail (in damn nice condition) on Monday.

How the hell did IGA screw up so bad with LoI? I must know this. I only put about 3 hours in with AoS, but it was… masterful. I cannot wait to see what he does with the DS. I have a feeling that there will be a few surprises in store with the DS.

So let me kind of get back on track with some comments continued from the LoI part. I ran back and forth in the front area of the castle in AoS about 5 times. I was never irritated with it. I spent 5 min getting a White Dragon soul: exit room, enter room, swing, swing, exit room, rinse, repeat. While tedious it was not irritating. I was the damn rat hitting the pellet button.

While I could to the same tedious task many times in AoS I would rather turn the system off than go through 1 part of LoI a couple times.

IGA defiantly gets my what the hell award for the decade here. I will probably finish this game soon, as I am having such a blast with it. I would easily compare this to one of my best gaming experiences. It also really makes me realize that Castlevania has so much room to move around in with 2D that 3D should just be ignored.


The Grudge:

Yea, a movie. I liked what it tried to do at point. Actually I am really interested in seeing the original now.

There were some really bad choices made in this movie (cheesy lines, actor/actress choices) and Bill Pullman seemed to be the only actor to realize that if you are going to play an American character living in Japan you should at least attempt to learn the language not just the lines you speak in Japanese.

Yea, so I liked the scare parts and the concept, but the acting at times is really poor. The feeling and mood were quite excellent, but the cheesy lines (“What . did they . do to . you . Yoko… ?”) would just spoil it.

I still can’t seem to see why so many people said such things as “pointless,” “waste of time,” “not scary,” “boring,” or other things. (yes, I have heard all quoted words). How the hell is a movie “pointless” anyways? You know, I think that is a much better question.


The weekend:

I had Wayne over this weekend and we avoided Mardi Gras together. Johnny also came by. Then Tim stopped over. Tim pulled his usually overstatement of skill story and his seeming large knowledge of things that he does not have. But, whatever, I know he is just ignorant and then prove him wrong.

At the end of Saturday we pulled out Caribbean Beats EX and … shit that is fun. We also played through Space Channel 5 part 1 and 2. That was great fun too. Then some Katamarii Damancy on Sunday with a hint of Technic Beat.

But something of large interest was my time (all of 10 min) with RE4. Yarrr, ‘tis time plunder boxes in search of buried treasure, harrr. I am not kidding, this game is a game. You can get bullets off of bodies of people who attacked you with pitchforks. If they had bullets why were they using a pitchfork?

It leads me to wonder where all these glowing reviews are founded? The first person you kill once you inspect them you get the comment “he was not a zombie”… O.K….

~~~

So this leaves me wondering if I should read more JoJo or play Cave Story. I like Cave Story as a fun game, but I don’t see what separates it from other similar games. Admittedly I am not too far in the game though, so I am interested to see the rest of it.